Monday, 18 July 2011

It's uncanny how accurate those Jimmy Buffett lyrics are, even after all these years.

Went to see Jimmy in concert Saturday with a couple of friends.

Okay, with 64 friends. All of a similar ilk.

Fantastic day.

Cheeseburger in Paradise party for the 64 in matching Hawaiian shirts in friends' back yard (thanks a bunch B & J), limo ride to the concert, then a couple of hours of grooving to Jimmy tunes meeting people all around us.

And the shirts have an additional advantage over and above just making you look extremely cool.

When one fellow - who will remain nameless - toddled back from the bar with a couple of adult beverages in hand, he apparently had trouble re-locating his group. I thought the group had moved. I mean, he thought the group had moved.

Another concert goer took one look at his shirt, pointed and said "You guys are over there." Perfect!

The only other event occurred when we were at the back of the lawn section and one of the fellows lost his sunglasses. I won't tell you which fellow, but those with even minimal investigative skills will be able to tell.

They fell back over the fencing, so he had to crawl underneath to retrieve them.

Which is when security came by and thought he was trying to sneak in to the concert. But some smooth talking by another of the guys eventually calmed the troubled waters....

This was a "red" security guy. There were also "blue", and as it turned out later, quite a few "yellow" security guys as well.

Now if you've never been to a Jimmy Buffett concert (which is more like an outdoor cocktail party) - and the pre-game festivities leading up to it - you better hurry, because the ugly rumour circulating is that Jimmy may be hanging up his flip flops soon.

Friday, 8 July 2011

Just after the turn of the century - the 19th century - when they were building the Prince Edward Viaduct, the designer, R.C. Harris, had the foresight to add (actually to demand) a lower level to accommodate a not-even-dreamed-about potential subway.

Many, many opposed it, saying "Too expensive. Not needed."

When the subway finally opened mid century, this addition saved millions of dollars in subway construction costs.

[You can see the subway chugging along beneath the upper road surface.]

Today's Toronto politicians are saying the same thing about the Eglinton and Sheppard subway projects. They want to build light rail transit down the centre of these streets.

The lure? They're cheaper and can get more of them for our buck. They claim the current mayor's support of subways is shortsighted and he has no vision of future transit.

Huh? Can you imagine if these councillor's were in power when the original subway decisions were being made? "Too expensive. Foolhardy."

Can you imagine if the subway had been rejected and we still has streetcars running up and down Yonge St today? And all along Bloor?

Urban Cowboy

Welcome

Hi, I'm Jim Arnott. For whatever reason, I've decided to create a blog. Why would someone want to read my blog? If you have any ideas, please let me know.

My shtick will be to post photos and comments using only my cell phone. Why? It's not because I'm too cheap to buy a real camera. Don't believe those rumours. It's because, well.......this is the only camera I choose to have. Yeah, that's it.

And based on this photo, maybe these low resolution babies are the way to go. Yikes!